Preview vs Stirling PDF

as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-09-21

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Preview and Stirling PDF land in a dead heat overall, both scoring 17 out of 100, though the path there differs. Preview shows up in 21 of 68 answers, with a perfect 3 of 3 for "best PDF editor for Mac," but it's never named for privacy, OCR, or Windows-editor questions. Stirling PDF appears in 17 of 68 answers and sweeps "best open-source or self-hosted PDF tool" at 3 of 3, plus solid showings on privacy and browser-based editing, but it's shut out on redaction, form-filling, and conversion questions. Head to head, Preview was named more often on 8 questions, Stirling PDF on 5, with 7 ties.

Head to head

metric	Preview	Stirling PDF
score	17	17
questions won	12	12

By assistant

Preview

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	4	5% of answers	#3.0
Claude	35	55% of answers	#4.8
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	13	20% of answers	#5.0

Stirling PDF

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	9	10% of answers	#2.0
Claude	36	60% of answers	#5.4
Gemini	not sampled this week
Perplexity	9	10% of answers	#1.5

Where they differ

Only Preview gets named for

What's the best tool to fill in and sign a PDF form?
What's the best tool to compress a large PDF?
What's the best tool to redact or remove sensitive text from a PDF?
Which PDF editor is best value for a small business?

Only Stirling PDF gets named for

What's the best open-source or self-hosted PDF tool?
Which PDF tool is best for privacy and sensitive documents?
What's the best PDF editor for Windows?
What's the best OCR tool to make a scanned PDF searchable?

More comparisons

Not sold on either?

Scores count how often each assistant names a product, weighted by position. How the score works · Full PDF editors leaderboard